Satori (12 page)

30

T
HE BLADE PLUNGED
deep into the victim’s belly.

The man gasped and then tried to stuff his innards back into his stomach as he staggered through the alley near Luang Prabang’s crowded marketplace, but it was far too late.

The Cobra jerked the knife back, turned away, and walked quickly out the dark alley into the streets of the northern Laotian town.

It all had to do with something called “Operation X,” but the Cobra didn’t really care. All that mattered was the money, and the payments from this client were always prompt and reliable.

The Cobra fingered a small medallion and could feel the outline of the embossed face and the script —

Per tu amicu.

For your friendship.

31

A
LARGE CROWD
had formed in Tiananmen Square.

Traffic stopped, and Nicholai looked out his window to see a military caravan — Soviet trucks and American Jeeps — come past as the crowd hooted and jeered.

Nicholai spotted the objects of their derision.

Two men, one Western and one Asian, stood in the back of an open Jeep, propped up by PLA soldiers holding their legs, their arms bound to their sides by ropes. In an open truck behind them, a squad of soldiers sat, their rifles held barrel up. Members of the mob threw garbage and old vegetables, shouted insults, rushed at the Jeep and spat at the prisoners.

“Spies,” Chen explained, watching for Nicholai’s reaction. “An Italian and a Japanese. They were plotting to assassinate the Chairman.”

“Truly?”

“They confessed.”

Chen’s car fell in behind the military caravan as it slowly made its way past Tiananmen Square toward the Temple of Heaven. The parade halted at the Bridge of Heaven and the crowd swarmed around it like an amoeba. Soldiers jumped out of the truck and roughly pulled the prisoners from the Jeep and shoved them to an open space at the base of the bridge. Other soldiers used the rifles to push people back, as an officer formed other soldiers into a file.

“You execute them in public?” Nicholai asked.

“It teaches a lesson.”

In a reversal of ethnic stereotypes, the Italian stood silent and stoic while the Japanese prisoner’s legs gave out and he dropped to his knees, sobbing. A soldier yanked him back and then Nicholai saw a man dressed in a long black coat and black hat emerge from the back of a car and walk toward the prisoners.

He held sheaves of paper in his left hand.

“Kang Sheng,” said Chen, a tremor of fear in his voice.

Nicholai watched Kang strut in front of the crowd, stand beside the prisoners, and shout the proclamation that recited their crimes and condemned them to the people’s righteous rage. The Chairman in his mercy had allowed them to be shot instead of strangled, beheaded, or simply beaten to death by the mob.

Kang finished the speech, posed for a moment, and then stepped offstage.

The officer shouted an order and the rifles were lifted with a metallic clatter that echoed through the crisp air. The Italian braced himself, but Nicholai could see the stain of urine darken his trousers. The crowd saw it too, and made much fun of it.

“Look! He pisses himself!”

“He drank too much wine last night!”

The Japanese dropped to his knees again. A soldier started for him, but the annoyed officer shook his head, barked another order, and three soldiers adjusted their aim. The officer had a feel for the moment, and he lifted his arm but paused for dramatic effect until the crowd quieted.

There was a moment of silence, and then the officer dropped his hand and shouted. The rifles roared and Nicholai saw the two prisoners crumple to the ground.

The Temple of Heaven, its famous blue-tiled roof glistening in the sun, loomed over them.

“Spies,” Chen concluded.

32

N
ICHOLAI’S MESSAGE
was relayed five times before it reached Haverford in Tokyo. Still, it arrived accurately, and Haverford decoded it instantly.

Zhengyici Opera, Thursday night.

The staff at the CIA station in Tokyo rushed into action. Within minutes, Haverford had a map of Beijing and several aerial photographs in front of him, and he drew a red circle around the Zhengyici Opera House.

Minutes after that, a Chinese refugee, a Beijing native, was in the room and identified the building as being in the Xuanwu District, southwest of the Old City, not far from the Temple of Heaven. One of the oldest parts of the city, it was a rabbit warren of narrow
hutongs
and old tenement houses. Before the Communist takeover, the area was host to the Bada Hutongs, the redlight district.

Haverford thanked and dismissed him, then got on a secure line to Bill Benton, chief of station Beijing, now working out of Macau.

“I need photos and plans of something called the Zhengyici Opera House,” Haverford said, “and an asset check in the Xuanwu District.”

Normally a request like this would take weeks, if it was answered at all, but Benton had been told in no uncertain terms that Haverford had Immediate Access Status. The requested pics and plans were on the wire within fifteen minutes, and an hour later Benton was back on the horn.

“What do we have in Xuanwu?” Haverford asked.

“You’re in luck. The Temple of the Green Truth is right down the street.”

“And what, pray tell, is the Temple of the Green Truth?” Haverford said as he scanned for it and then found the building on the map.

“The oldest mosque in Beijing,” Benton answered.

A photo of the temple appeared under Haverford’s nose. It looked like any old Chinese temple — Buddhist or Daoist — with blue-and-red columns and a sloping roof. But then Haverford noticed that the roof tiles were not the usual blue, but green. “The Commies left it standing?”

“No choice — it’s in the middle of a Hui neighborhood.”

Haverford knew that Benton was playing the “I know more than you know” game. But it was typical of the old China hands, always defensive about the fact that they “lost” the country to the Communists, and ever resentful at now being subordinate to the Asia Desk and Johnny-come-latelies like Haverford. But he was sympathetic — most of their assets had been rolled up, and now an entirely new network had to be built, slowly and painfully.

“Chinese-speaking Muslim minority,” Benton explained. “Been in Beijing for a thousand years. They call their brand of Islam
qing zhen
— ‘the Green Truth.’ ”

“Do we own a few of these Huis?” Haverford asked.

“More than a few,” Benton answered. “They hate the fucking Reds, see them as godless infidels trying to suppress their religion. Also, they’re hooked into the Muslim minority out in Xinjiang who are looking to secede.”

It has possibilities, Haverford thought. “I’ll need an extraction team.”

“We can do that.”

“And a dead drop location for an asset in Beijing,” Haverford added.

“Can you toss a few guns to Xinjiang?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll get back to you with details,” Benton said.

“I’ll come to Hong Kong to work out the details.” He didn’t want Benton fucking this up and he didn’t have much time to finalize a plan and get it to Hel.

33

T
HE WEAPON LOOKED
as ugly as it was lethal.

There is no honor and hence no beauty in it, Nicholai thought. A sword is beautiful for the care and craft that goes into its creation, and honorable for the courage it takes to wield in personal combat.

But a “rocket launcher”?

It is ugly in proportion to its destructive power. Anonymously produced by soulless drones on an assembly line in some American factory, it brings no distinction to its owner, just the ability to kill and destroy from a distance.

Still, Nicholai had to admit as Yu recited the weapon’s particulars, its power was impressive.

The M20 rocket launcher—a.k.a. the “Super Bazooka” — weighed a mere fifteen pounds and was a little over sixty inches long, half of that being barrel. It fired an eight-pound HEAT rocket that, at a velocity of 340 feet per second, could penetrate eleven inches of armor plating at an effective range of a hundred yards. It could take out a heavy tank, an armored personnel carrier, a half-track, or a fortified pillbox.

The weapon, basically a tube with an electric firing device and a reflecting sight attached, could be broken down into two pieces for easy carrying by two men. It could be fired from a standing, sitting, or — critically for its intended purpose — prone position. That is, a man could lie in a rice paddy or stand of elephant grass and get off an accurate shot. A well-trained team of two men could fire six rounds inside of a minute, while an elite team could fire as many as sixteen shots in the same period of time.

“Could one man operate it if he had to?” Nicholai asked.

“Once it’s on its tripod.”

“And they are included?”

“Of course, Comrade Guibert.”

Nicholai made him open each of the fifty cases and inspected each rocket launcher. He was no expert on these weapons, but a failure to do so would have aroused Yu’s suspicions. No serious arms dealer — as Guibert certainly was — would have gambled on buying five cases of rocket launchers and forty-five cases of mud bricks.

The weapons were packed in a thin layer of grease to prevent fungus damage to the gunsights.

“You provide the solvent to clean them?” Nicholai asked.

“Of course.”

Fifty of these weapons, Nicholai contemplated, each of them capable of taking out a French tank, half-track, or pillbox, could make an enormous difference to the Viet Minh.

Perhaps a decisive difference.

The Viet Minh had prematurely launched a conventional offensive against the French troops on the Day River. Gunned down en masse by superior French firepower and armor, the Viet Minh lost eleven thousand men in just twenty-six days of fighting. Even so, they had almost prevailed and might have done so, had the Americans not intervened with yet another new weapon.

They called it “napalm,” liquid fire dropped from airplanes, and the Viet Minh were incinerated where they stood.

Does the American genius for mass destruction know no bounds? Nicholai wondered, recalling the firebombing of Tokyo, and of course the atomic weapons that annihilated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“I’ll take them,” he said, “depending, of course, on the price.”

Not that he really needed to drive a bargain — Haverford had supplied him with more than enough money — but, again, what kind of arms merchant wouldn’t try to drive the price down?

Not Michel Guibert.

“I am authorized to negotiate for the Defense Ministry,” Yu said. “Perhaps over lunch?”

They repaired to an enclosed pavilion overlooking Longtan Lake.

The food was quite good. A whole boiled fish in a sweet brown sauce, followed by greens in garlic and then
zha jiang ma,
thick wheat noodles with ground pork in yellow soybean sauce.

Nicholai asked, “So what is your price?”

“What is your offer?” Yu asked, refusing to take the bait of making the first bid.

Nicholai stated a ridiculously low figure.

“Perhaps you misunderstand,” Yu replied. “You are not purchasing just the crates, but the contents as well.” He quadrupled Nicholai’s offer.

“Perhaps I misspoke,” Nicholai responded. “I wish to buy fifty, not five hundred.” But he raised his offer a bit.

“We have expenses,” Yu said. He gave his new figure.

“Apparently heavy ones,” Nicholai answered. But now he knew Yu’s real price, for the colonel had shifted in mere arithmetic proportion toward his goal. An unimaginative Go player lacking in subtlety or flair. But Nicholai was eager to conclude this distasteful bargaining, so he raised his offer to a figure just below Yu’s desired one. He was surprised when Yu accepted. It raised Nicholai’s hackles and he wondered why.

Yu quickly provided the answer. “Now we must discuss transportation.”

Nicholai feigned interest. Of course he had no intention of actually buying these arms, much less shipping them anywhere. By the time the weapons were ready to go, he would have killed Voroshenin and hopefully made his escape. Still, the game must be played, so he said, “Of course I will pay reasonable shipping charges to some location near the Vietnamese border.”

Yu nodded. “You will deposit the funds into an account in Lausanne. When we have received the payment, we will give you a location in Yunnan Province. The appropriate army unit will help you to transport the merchandise to the Vietnamese border. Beyond that, it is up to you and your ultimate client.”

“I will deposit half the money into the Swiss account,” Nicholai replied, “and the other half when the merchandise and myself arrive safely at the border.”

“Your lack of trust is unsettling.”

“I am told,” Nicholai responded, “that despite the doubtless heroic efforts of the PLA, the mountains of Yunnan are rife with bandits.”

“There are a few, very minor counterrevolutionary elements clinging to survival,” Yu answered. “We will wipe these
tu fei
out soon.”

“In the meantime,” Nicholai said, “I should not wish my merchandise to be taken from me until I can deliver it to my client. Pardon my rudeness, but I cannot help but think that the local army unit of which you spoke would be even more diligent if it had, shall we say, a rooting interest.”

Yu set down his chopsticks. “Capitalists always assume that everyone is motivated by money.”

“And Communists are not,” Nicholai answered. “Hence the bank account in Lausanne. And why do you assume that I am a capitalist?”

“You are certainly not a Communist.”

“I’m a Guibertist,” Nicholai responded.

Yu chuckled. “Two-thirds and one-third.”

“Done.”

Nicholai picked up his chopsticks and went back to eating.

34

“T
HE DEAL IS MADE?”
Liu asked.

“Yes,” answered Yu.

“Good,” Liu said. “And is he still pretending to be this Frenchman, Guibert?”

“And doing it very well, as a matter of fact.”

Liu laughed.